Monday, October 16, 2006

Blog changes

Did you know that someone is making money off of your blog without your permission? I've been doing my own research on this, and I'm really upset about it. I'll refer you to Moof's description of the situation (Part 1 - especially the comments, Part 2, Part 3), as she is the first I heard about this. Mimi also has a descrpition on her blog. I also refer you to Lorelle.

Bitacle.org is the villain here. They are stealing your posts (the full text, pictures, etc from your post), slapping ads at the top and collecting the cash. Want to see an example? Click here.

Are you on bitacle? Check for yourself. Make sure you search under the "aggregates" tab to try to find your own blog. What can you do? Read about it more at Stop Bitacle. They have a button to put on your blog.

As you can see, I've but a couple of buttons at the top of this post. Bitacle doesn't see the sidebar, so if you decide to get a button, make sure you place it in the post itself to be effective. I'm toying with the idea of putting the buttons at the top of each post for the time being. That would be a significant blog change for me.

I just found another way to possibly fight back. It's from Plain Jane Mom; it's creative, and it's funny. If it works out, then I won't have to put those buttons at the top of each post. Check it out the great tip here.

In other blog related news, I'm going to moderate comments now. (I've talked about comments before, click here to read more.) I never wanted to do this, but I'm starting to get a lot of spam comments - the price of fame, I guess *smile*. So, if you don't see your comments popping up right away, that's why. (Parlancheq, thanks for asking)

Finally, I've decided to cut down the number of posts on the front page. (I've also talked about this before, click here.) I'm right around the 150 total posts range, and I've seen people have blogger problems when the front page gets a high number of posts. Want to read my previous posts? I invite you to check out the archive section in my sidebar. I'm really tired. Long weekend working, ugh...

Update: The bitacle link for this post is here. None of my top graphics are there. I tried Plain Jane Mom's suggestion but unfortunately it didn't show up as on hers - bummer, that would have been funny. Just wanted to update all of you.

I followed Moof's instructions, found that my blog is listed in the "Bitacle" search engine -- but apparently not in the "Aggregates" -- and that, if I understand her correctly, is where the mischief is.

Or in my case would be.

Doc, I don't know whether to be happy or sad: I can't even get stolen! (There's a Rodney Dangerfield line in here somewhere.)

My entire freakin' blog is there! How did this happen? How do I get them to get my blog off their list? HEEEEELP!

BTW, I started comment moderation when a high school friend posted a comment that pretty much gave away every piece of identifying information it could give. As soon as my heart started beating again, I deleted that comment and turned on comment moderation. I sleep better at night now. Plus I could get rid of that annoying "copy these funky letters" box. Oh, wait, I notice you still have the funky letters box. Well, nevermind. You don't need it anymore, but if it helps you sleep better at night...

Wow. I really had no idea that something like that was out there. They stole a post or two from my blog as well (I have no idea why!). Anyway.. thanks for the informative post and keep us updated on things we can do!

Dr. Anon .. sorry that I'm just now getting to my blogrun ... I hope I can get caught up over the week end ...

Wanted to tell you that my graphics are all up on Bitacle ... the difference is that I'm letting the full feed out each time, instead of just a title or a summary paragraph. If you set your feed to give the entire article, your graphics will show up too.

Also ... not sure this will work for Blogspot, but I got a nice plugin which automatically puts the following at the bottom of all of my RSS feeds: